Thursday, August 11. 2005
DRM - Only 33% Off! Students Welcome!
I was all set to write a "Happy 1st Birthday to DRMBlog" post when I read this article by ZDNet and decided to postpone the birthday celebration. Perhaps when my mindset gets past livid and moves into only-slightly-less-enraged, I'll announce the idea I've been kicking around for DRMBlog's birthday.
Let me 'splain. No, it is too much. Let me sum up. Several university bookstores are testing out a new program from publishers that sells several of their most popular books and textbooks in electronic form. The student purchases a card that is assigned a book title that the student is then able to download. Starts out cool, I agree, until you find out that they include harsh usage restrictions in the form of digital rights management.
The student is only able to download the text to one computer. Moreover, the access to the electronic book is hugely temporary. After five months (150 days) the file will no longer be accessible. Other limitations may exist including the inability to print the entirety of the book all at once (like that's going to prevent someone from actually printing the whole thing piece meal and reaching the same result).
And, here's the kicker, the price is only discounted 33% from retail value of the book. I'd consider it, only briefly, if the price was lower, perhaps 75-90% off the retail, printed textbook price. There is practically no overhead to producing these ebooks. They can sell and resell and three-sell to infinity the same product without actually tapping a single resource except bandwidth. These publishers have taken what could be a very lucrative business launch and mucked it up with DRM, and not just one-user-one-computer DRM, but the expiring license and EULA kind, which to me is of the particularly nasty, virulent sort.
By introducing these new DRM'd ebooks, publishers are attempting to trump one very large competitor to their university textbook sales: widespread reselling of physical textbooks for which they receive no windfall. Why do you think they so frequently release updated editions of their textbooks? Many times it is because the world or our worldview has changed and thus parts of the textbook must be rewritten, but often it's just a correction or two and a worthless extra chapter so that the publisher can sell new books all over again by making the older editions seem outdated.
And who would be a better sucker to sell an expiring ebook to than a customer looking for the cheapest option and forced by circumstances to read the book, i.e. a broke college student with a hefty booklist?
The truly criminal part of this whole pile of publishing hoohah is that I am certain that a portion of these books are classics that have no copyright and thus can be legally printed and sold by anyone who has a mind to do so. To have made it onto the publisher's test list, the titles had to be popular enough to be widely used across many classes and curriculums. Re: English lit titles, Greek classics, or less precisely, one third of the books I have on my personal bookshelf from an agonizing period of major-switching. Such titles would likely be free to own, read, and print via Project Gutenberg. I'm sure many of the trial e-textbooks are exceptions to my previous statement, such as core textbooks written by academics and copyrighted by these participating publishers or classics that have prefaces and translator’s notes that are protected under copyright. But included among the bunch are certain to be ones that have no copyright limitation on them to begin with.
I've spent the morning emailing many of the publishers and distributors involved to get a list of the titles currently being offered in the trial program. I'll post here when/if I hear back from any of the people I’ve contacted. If anyone else has additional information (students, write in, too, and let me know what ebooks are available on your bookstore’s shelves!), please email me. Here's a list of participating schools and publishers from the article:
Author: Ginger Cox
Let me 'splain. No, it is too much. Let me sum up. Several university bookstores are testing out a new program from publishers that sells several of their most popular books and textbooks in electronic form. The student purchases a card that is assigned a book title that the student is then able to download. Starts out cool, I agree, until you find out that they include harsh usage restrictions in the form of digital rights management.
The student is only able to download the text to one computer. Moreover, the access to the electronic book is hugely temporary. After five months (150 days) the file will no longer be accessible. Other limitations may exist including the inability to print the entirety of the book all at once (like that's going to prevent someone from actually printing the whole thing piece meal and reaching the same result).
And, here's the kicker, the price is only discounted 33% from retail value of the book. I'd consider it, only briefly, if the price was lower, perhaps 75-90% off the retail, printed textbook price. There is practically no overhead to producing these ebooks. They can sell and resell and three-sell to infinity the same product without actually tapping a single resource except bandwidth. These publishers have taken what could be a very lucrative business launch and mucked it up with DRM, and not just one-user-one-computer DRM, but the expiring license and EULA kind, which to me is of the particularly nasty, virulent sort.
By introducing these new DRM'd ebooks, publishers are attempting to trump one very large competitor to their university textbook sales: widespread reselling of physical textbooks for which they receive no windfall. Why do you think they so frequently release updated editions of their textbooks? Many times it is because the world or our worldview has changed and thus parts of the textbook must be rewritten, but often it's just a correction or two and a worthless extra chapter so that the publisher can sell new books all over again by making the older editions seem outdated.
And who would be a better sucker to sell an expiring ebook to than a customer looking for the cheapest option and forced by circumstances to read the book, i.e. a broke college student with a hefty booklist?
The truly criminal part of this whole pile of publishing hoohah is that I am certain that a portion of these books are classics that have no copyright and thus can be legally printed and sold by anyone who has a mind to do so. To have made it onto the publisher's test list, the titles had to be popular enough to be widely used across many classes and curriculums. Re: English lit titles, Greek classics, or less precisely, one third of the books I have on my personal bookshelf from an agonizing period of major-switching. Such titles would likely be free to own, read, and print via Project Gutenberg. I'm sure many of the trial e-textbooks are exceptions to my previous statement, such as core textbooks written by academics and copyrighted by these participating publishers or classics that have prefaces and translator’s notes that are protected under copyright. But included among the bunch are certain to be ones that have no copyright limitation on them to begin with.
I've spent the morning emailing many of the publishers and distributors involved to get a list of the titles currently being offered in the trial program. I'll post here when/if I hear back from any of the people I’ve contacted. If anyone else has additional information (students, write in, too, and let me know what ebooks are available on your bookstore’s shelves!), please email me. Here's a list of participating schools and publishers from the article:
The trial project starting this semester is the first to include multiple publishers and one of the largest textbook wholesalers in the country, MBS Textbook Exchange. The publishers include McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Houghton Mifflin, John Wiley & Sons, Thomson Learning and Sage Publications.
MBS Textbook Exchange, which provides inventory and accounting services as well as wholesale book distribution, developed the card system with input from the publishers and a handful of bookstores, hoping that it and its customers could avoid being cut out of the sales process as digital sales grew.
The digital books will be initially available at the University of Oregon, the University of Utah, Portland Community College, Bowling Green State University, Princeton University, Georgetown College, California State University-Fullerton, Morehead State University, and at privately owned stores serving West Virginia University and Louisiana State University.
Author: Ginger Cox
Comments
Expiring after 150 days? How many of us need to refer to our textbooks when we've got a real job? ANSWER - all of us.
This moronic time-restriction will destroy the reference library of old textbooks which all professionals need.
Major bad idea man!
(Steve Downes said something about this. Search: http://www.downes.ca/ )
Cheers!
MFG
This moronic time-restriction will destroy the reference library of old textbooks which all professionals need.
Major bad idea man!
(Steve Downes said something about this. Search: http://www.downes.ca/ )
Cheers!
MFG
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